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Melrose Case Study: Medical Device Rapid Prototyping

Medical device prototype challenge

Melrose recently had a customer contact us with an interesting challenge. They needed a rapid prototype for a critical design review meeting with their client. The part was a printed overlay for a medical device that required several colors, selective texture, cutting, and embossing.

The typical lead time for such a part, including tooling build, is three to four weeks. The customer needed it in a week.

Melrose has extensive experience with rapid prototyping. But for this short turnaround, we needed to get creative.

Innovative prototyping

Given the tight deadline and the embossing requirement, we knew that going to a traditional embossing tool provider was not an option. Our manufacturing engineer believed that the solution was to build the emboss tool in-house by machining and assembling a combination of rigid materials. The solution worked and we were able to emboss the product logo without the usual delays associated with outsourcing the tool build.

Upon completion of the screen printing and embossing processes, the sheets were moved over to our digital cutting line. Efficiently managing each stage of the process, the parts were finished in just four days. The parts were ready and delivered in time for the client’s design review presentation.

Key elements of the part include:

High-gloss hard-coated abrasion-resistant polycarbonate
Screen printing for selective texturing
Digital printing for graphics
Custom machined and assembled components to create an in-house embossing tool
High-power CNC laser cutting

Our motivation

At Melrose, we believe that encouraging creativity is essential to solving complex problems. Having a technically knowledgeable workforce is important. But fostering a culture of curiosity and creativity is truly where innovation happens, and the most challenging problems are solved. We embrace our client’s challenges and empower our team to find solutions. This is what makes what we do so exciting.